Apple isn't normally the first company to put new chips from Intel, AMD, and Nvidia in its products, but the wait for the new iMacs has been long by any standard. Some 19 months have passed between the early May introduction of the 2011 iMac and the late November shipping dates for this year's models. But the Intel CPUs and Nvidia GPUs the 21.5-inch model uses were both available months ago, and these desktops haven't made the jump to a pixel-quadrupled "Retina" display. No one knows for certain whether the device's delays were due to rumored manufacturing issues or merely the decreasing importance of desktop computers to Apple's bottom line, but at least the refreshed computers are finally here.

The 2012 iMac's most visible innovation is, of course, its physical design—this is the first substantial change to the iMac's body since the aluminum unibody iMacs were introduced in late 2009. The edges of the computer are just 5 mm wide, a significant reduction from the desktops the company has been selling for the last few years. The end result is a computer that is substantially lighter and thinner than it was before.

Happily, the newest iMacs still retain most of what made past models appealing—the graphics processors won't set any speed records, but they compare favorably to those in competing all-in-ones. Fast, desktop-class quad-core Ivy Bridge processors from Intel power every iMac within the pricing spectrum. The screens, while not of the Retina variety just yet, are excellent IPS panels with great color and viewing angles. There are several improvements subtly enhancing their quality over previous models. And as with other all-in-ones, cable clutter is kept to a minimum.

Despite that progress, there are a number of regressions—particularly in the $1,299 21.5-inch model we're looking at in this review. These new iMacs really are attractive machines, but what features are sacrificed in pursuit of thinness, and can you live without them?

Body and build quality

The new iMac is going to take up about the same amount of space on your desk as the old model—the thinner body of the machine doesn't subtract much from its "stand depth." That's still 6.9 inches (down from 7.42 inches on the old model). What's much more noticeable is the machine's weight: at 12.5 pounds, it's exactly eight pounds lighter than its predecessor. You can immediately feel it when you lift the computer and move it around.

Though its body is much thinner and lighter, the new iMac has a lot in common with the preceding aluminum unibody design (which was itself not drastically different from the first aluminum-and-glass iMac introduced back in 2007). The front of the system is mostly taken up by the 1920x1080 display, its surrounding black bezel, and the sheet of glass that covers both of them. The "chin" below the screen and the back of the computer are one solid piece of aluminum mounted on a separate stand. As with all of Apple's aluminum unibody hardware, the fit and finish is excellent. There's nothing about the new iMac that looks or feels cheap.

Enlarge/ From the front, the 2012 iMac (left) looks very similar to the 2011 model (right).

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ The back of the computer is also very similar to its predecessor.

Andrew Cunningham

The monitor stand is very slightly smaller than previous models due to the computer's decreased weight. It will continue to be a sticking point for some—where the competition can often swivel, pivot, and go up and down, the iMac's stand still only allows for tilting the screen up and down. The high-quality IPS display panels that Apple uses ensures viewing angles are never a problem. But if you need to raise (or lower) your iMac significantly to make yourself more comfortable at your desk, you'll have to figure something else out.

Enlarge/ The red beans and rice didn't miss this iMac, which is much thinner around the edges than it is in the middle.

Andrew Cunningham

While the new iMac is indeed very thin around the edges, Apple's product photos don't convey that the new iMac still packs much back. All that computer has to fit somewhere, and the iMac tucks most of it away in the juicy bubble on the back of the machine. It's still much thinner than the old model, make no mistake, but while buying the iMac at the Apple store I heard more than one fan gushing about how the whole system was LCD-thin throughout. That isn't quite true.

The thing about the new iMac is that once it's on your desk, you don't often notice how thin it is. Viewed from the front, it's basically indistinguishable from the last few models (as you can see in some of our comparison shots). This isn't a bad thing, really, and it's still a very attractive computer. But it goes to show that you can really only do so much from a design perspective with an all-in-one that is, by necessity, mostly screen.

Andrew Cunningham
Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue. Twitter@AndrewWrites

293 Reader Comments

Great review. It's nice to see the actual practicality of the decisions Apple makes scrutinised for a change. Many other reviews have been gushing about the looks and performance, but not directly comparing it to previous models.

There's a threshold for form vs function and this version, in my opinion, is leaning towards the form side a little too much. We don't need a thinner desktop machine. We need a better, faster one.

Having all of the ports on the back is a major downer. I understand that it allows for a uniform appearance when viewed from the front, but I wish they would have skipped the "thin edge" design and added some ports along the side instead.

I get the distinct impression that the seemingly unnecessary thinness of the new iMac isn't so much for the desktop but a first look at what a Apple Television could look like. Pretty much every LCD TV manufacturer has been obsessed with the thinnest flat screens and this manufacturing process would improve on even those impressively thin designs.

If you bumped the iMac to 55-inches and stuck an HDMI input cable into it, you'd have a pretty impressive TV. A thin desktop computer doesn't make a big difference, but a wall-mounted TV as thin as this new iMac would be quite impressive.

The pursuit of thinness is getting ridiculous. "Thin" is not a feature, generally speaking, and when it starts to compromise actual features of a device, it think it's time to evaluate just how important it is to be that slim. That was the reason Apple cited for skipping wireless charging and NFC on the iPhone 5, both of which have actual utility. This is on a device that is so thin that I put a case on it just so it would have enough size that I wasn't constantly concerned about dropping it.

While you can make an argument that thin is useful in mobile devices to increase pocket ability and portability (up to a point), I can't see how gaining an inch of depth on what is essentially a monitor is worth any functionality tradeoff.

From an engineering standpoint. All those people who think Apple should put a retina display.

What would it take? How much graphics oomph do you need to really make it go and be smooth on a 27" screen? I know they had trouble with the retinas in the iPads and smaller 15" screens, and 27" is a massive pixel increase.

I'd love to see an iMac with a slightly beefier stand, that has a pop-up port section with a series of ports facing the user. Kind of like the old iMacs had the pull down bit for USB, and Audio. A much thicker stand, but much more accessible series of ports for things like headphones or SD cards.

"From an engineering standpoint. All those people who think Apple should put a retina display.

What would it take? How much graphics oomph do you need to really make it go and be smooth on a 27" screen? I know they had trouble with the retinas in the iPads and smaller 15" screens, and 27" is a massive pixel increase. "

Couldn't they at least bump up the resolution of the iMac to retina Macbook levels with the same amount of graphical horsepower as the Macbook? It wouldn't be as high of a PPI because the iMac screen is so much larger, but it would be higher than what they offer now.

From an engineering standpoint. All those people who think Apple should put a retina display.

What would it take? How much graphics oomph do you need to really make it go and be smooth on a 27" screen? I know they had trouble with the retinas in the iPads and smaller 15" screens, and 27" is a massive pixel increase.

What would it take? SLI dual or quad of today's mobile chips?

Whatever it would take, you couldn't cool it in a case like this without making the whole thing one big heatsink...which would be fun.

After using Retina (MacBook Pro 15") for just 3 months, no way I'd ever go to another display as grainy as non-Retina. The difference is a whole universe.

Apple risks some other company taking advantage by coming first with unibody Retina display.Of course, there are million other reasons to be with an Apple product. But that is mostly an decision argument for purists and aesthetes like some of us.

I get the distinct impression that the seemingly unnecessary thinness of the new iMac isn't so much for the desktop but a first look at what a Apple Television could look like. Pretty much every LCD TV manufacturer has been obsessed with the thinnest flat screens and this manufacturing process would improve on even those impressively thin designs.

If you bumped the iMac to 55-inches and stuck an HDMI input cable into it, you'd have a pretty impressive TV. A thin desktop computer doesn't make a big difference, but a wall-mounted TV as thin as this new iMac would be quite impressive.

Would it? Seems to me it would be difficult to wall-mount something with a big bulge in the back, as opposed to being a more uniform thickness.

Great review, I must say. I am however interested in one peculiar thing. The iMac in the review and the iMac which says "Made in the USA" (page one) isn't the same. Furthermore, Andrew is credited with both that photo and the photos of the iMac used in the review. But the iMac that says "Made in the USA" (and I'm paraphrasing here, I'm typing this on my iPad so I'd rather not go back and double check) isn't sold in the US, where I assume Andrew lives, rather I can clearly tell by the engraving that this particular device is to be sold in Sweden.

Thus, did Andrew go to Europe to take the picture, or is it someone else's picture, or what? Or did he get a review unit that just happened to be designated for Sweden? I'm not pointing fingers or trying to be rude, I'm just curious about this, as it kind of stands out to me.

From an engineering standpoint. All those people who think Apple should put a retina display.

What would it take? How much graphics oomph do you need to really make it go and be smooth on a 27" screen? I know they had trouble with the retinas in the iPads and smaller 15" screens, and 27" is a massive pixel increase.

What would it take? SLI dual or quad of today's mobile chips?

SLI doesn't give an option of driving a larger display some of that is determined by the GPU design itself and some by the physical connector (and a bit of both). But a "retina" class 27" display? Probably not with current GPUs, busses, memory configurations and display connection technology.

Apple risks some other company taking advantage by coming first with unibody Retina display.

As much as I want that to be true, I doubt it.

As the article said, the competition in the all-in-one field is extremely disappointing--none of few vendors that are remaining in the field appears to have the courage to be the first one to jump in with new technologies, or even just make premium all-in-ones that could challenge the iMac. Apple can pretty much do whatever it wants with the iMac by this point, because other have given up.

I sent in an order for a Mac mini after seeing the iMac. I could live with the limitations mentioned in the article, but they sure don't help; and in any case, I wanted something in the 24" range--21" is too small and 27" too big. So I'll live with the mini for a couple of years, and perhaps upgrade to an iMac when the form factor is more mature.

Great review, I must say. I am however interested in one peculiar thing. The iMac in the review and the iMac which says "Made in the USA" (page one) isn't the same. Furthermore, Andrew is credited with both that photo and the photos of the iMac used in the review. But the iMac that says "Made in the USA" (and I'm paraphrasing here, I'm typing this on my iPad so I'd rather not go back and double check) isn't sold in the US, where I assume Andrew lives, rather I can clearly tell by the engraving that this particular device is to be sold in Sweden.

Thus, did Andrew go to Europe to take the picture, or is it someone else's picture, or what? Or did he get a review unit that just happened to be designated for Sweden? I'm not pointing fingers or trying to be rude, I'm just curious about this, as it kind of stands out to me.

Keep up the good work and thanks.

I went to an Apple store in Bridgewater, New Jersey and bought this guy straight off the shelf, one of the first off the truck. It's sitting in my office right now. I couldn't tell you why there's Swedish on the bottom of the stand.

Edit: I just looked, and there's Swedish on the stand of my 2011 iMac too. Maybe it's just some oddball regulatory requirement?

Great review! And it all boils down to my personal example:I was shopping for an iMac for my parents as they have finally agreed to make the jump over to Macs. I knew the refresh was coming this Fall/Winter and so was waiting to see how the new machine stacked up. While the fusion drive is very interesting, the ultra-thin profile, lack of optical drive and no ability to upgrade RAM in the 21 inch made me go the refurbished route. It's been a great machine thus far.

In our house we don't have a flatscreen TV. Our 24" iMac 7,1 is the primary video watching device. So the most distressing thing about this review for me, aside from no DVD drive, is that the speakers are worse.

I'm very interested in getting the 27" iMac once it goes Retina—maybe next year?—but the speakers need to be good on a machine like this!

At the end of 2009 I bought an 27" i7 iMac. A year later I upgraded the RAM myself to 16GB. Six months ago the internal hard disk broke (yes, one of those 1TB Seagates), so it had to be opened up to replace it. I took the opportunity to replace the optical drive with an SSD and upgrade the hard disk to 2TB. I recently turned the combo into a Fusion drive.

Reading this review, I suddenly realise how current and fast my three (!) year old iMac is. I'm really only missing out on Thunderbolt, USB3, reduced glare on the screen and oooh-aaah 'thinness'.

The original iMac didn't have a floppy disk or a parallel printer port???

WHARRGARBL!

Some things never get old.

Not really the same argument at all. In those cases, sufficient argument could be made regarding the merit of shedding legacy I/O. Here, though, Andrew Cunningham makes a compelling argument as to why the pursuit of thinness at the sake of sacrificing features isn't necessarily appropriate to the AiO/desktop space.

This is especially true as their only full-blown desktop offering, the Mac Pro, is languishing in obscurity at this point. The Mac mini offers a compromise of sorts between the iMac and Mac Pro, but, yeah. The counter-argument to thinness in the desktop space is much more valid than the shedding of legacy, antiquated I/O.

I get the distinct impression that the seemingly unnecessary thinness of the new iMac isn't so much for the desktop but a first look at what a Apple Television could look like. Pretty much every LCD TV manufacturer has been obsessed with the thinnest flat screens and this manufacturing process would improve on even those impressively thin designs.

If you bumped the iMac to 55-inches and stuck an HDMI input cable into it, you'd have a pretty impressive TV. A thin desktop computer doesn't make a big difference, but a wall-mounted TV as thin as this new iMac would be quite impressive.

The inputs would be a problem. Having all the ports in the "bulge" is enough of a pain with a monitor, but with a TV that some people would want to wall-mount? No thank you.

I get the distinct impression that the seemingly unnecessary thinness of the new iMac isn't so much for the desktop but a first look at what a Apple Television could look like. Pretty much every LCD TV manufacturer has been obsessed with the thinnest flat screens and this manufacturing process would improve on even those impressively thin designs.

If you bumped the iMac to 55-inches and stuck an HDMI input cable into it, you'd have a pretty impressive TV. A thin desktop computer doesn't make a big difference, but a wall-mounted TV as thin as this new iMac would be quite impressive.

Would it? Seems to me it would be difficult to wall-mount something with a big bulge in the back, as opposed to being a more uniform thickness.

Have you ever actually mounted a display to a wall before?

All you need are the standard ANSI mount points and enough structural integrity to hang the TV from them.

TVs are already pretty thin and so was the previous iMac. It's not clear that you gain much of anything from the marginal increase in thinness here. If anything, it sounds like the result of a corporate echo chamber effect.

The original iMac didn't have a floppy disk or a parallel printer port???

WHARRGARBL!

Some things never get old.

...like printers. They are immortal by computing standards. You could have bought one with your PPC or 68k Mac and it would still be chugging along just fine and as useful as the day you first bought it.

Thinking like yours is why people don't think Macs belong in business environments.

From an engineering standpoint. All those people who think Apple should put a retina display.

What would it take? How much graphics oomph do you need to really make it go and be smooth on a 27" screen? I know they had trouble with the retinas in the iPads and smaller 15" screens, and 27" is a massive pixel increase.

What would it take? SLI dual or quad of today's mobile chips?

Aside from that, cost of the panel itself is still going to be a huge barrier. Sharp is releasing a 32 inch monitor at 3840x2160 which would give you a 137ppi display. That thing's going to be 5500 dollars. The larger-than-laptop monitors that approach 200ppi are currently in the 5 figures range, and I wouldn't even know where to go to buy one.

I have dual 27 inch 2560x1440 monitors and that's been pretty damn nice to fill my field of view with.

Come March or so of next year I am going to buy one of the new 27" iMacs, if I can swing it. My Core 2 Duo iMac is starting to feel long in the tooth, and I really want the larger screen. I find a lot to like about the new iMacs, but, even as an Apple user, I don't see the see the point of the thinness, as far as my needs and uses are concerned. It's not a huge deal, overall, as I don't like tinkering with machines these days, and the one thing I'd bother with, RAM, is user-accessible.

But, still, it seems to make the machine overall less accessible for users, harder to work on, and all for something that I feel will benefit few users.

In our house we don't have a flatscreen TV. Our 24" iMac 7,1 is the primary video watching device. So the most distressing thing about this review for me, aside from no DVD drive, is that the speakers are worse.

I'm very interested in getting the 27" iMac once it goes Retina—maybe next year?—but the speakers need to be good on a machine like this!